This invention relates to aft aligning device for coupling a vehicle to a towing vehicle.
The typical method of coupling a trailer, such as a recreational vehicle, to a towing vehicle is laborious and time consuming. Many vehicles are very heavy and the towing tongue thereof cannot be lifted and otherwise manipulated by hand. The trailer usually has a jack stand that adjusts vertically for raising and lowering the tongue to position it for coupling and uncoupling. The alignment must therefore be accurate without any assistance which of course requires skill in aiming the ball hitch under the ball socket of the tongue. Also, since the vehicles to be towed are usually quite heavy, the towing vehicle must be backed up carefully to avoid damage by abutting forces against the drawbar hitch or the towing vehicle itself. These problems have been recognized and alignment devices have been proposed. For example U.S. Pat. No. 4,871,185 relates to an aligning guide that uses a V-shaped guide that is clamped between the ball and the drawbar by the ball fastener. The guide has vertical slidable spring-held male and female mating parts which allow removal when the hitching is completed or otherwise to be removed from the vehicle. This prior device also uses spring-held longitudinal positioning means for lateral and longitudinal positioning. The removal of the guide is an important feature but the spring-held vertically slidable male and female parts and the spring-held longitudinal positioning means provide a structure that can easily fail. For example, if the ball socket on the towed vehicle, and especially a heavy vehicle, should be substantially out of alignment when the towing is back up or the towing vehicle is moving too fast, the springs could be released to cause separation of or damage to parts of the aligning guide or damage to the towing vehicle. Other devices have been patented such as shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,844,496, 4,854,604, 4,961,590, 4,974,866 and 5,236,215. While these devices do not incorporate spring devices subject to damage, they are not easily removable, some of them are overly complicated, and some are expensive to manufacture.